Summit: City went on diet, making health costs easier to swallow

Tuesday

Sep 30, 2008 at 12:01 AMSep 30, 2008 at 5:15 AM

Using the city of Somerville's efforts as a case example, panelists at Monday's forum argued cities and towns can begin making systematic changes in their communities to turn the tide, reduce the increasing obesity rate and create a higher quality of life for residents -- and ultimately, reducing costs.

Noah R. Bombard

It's no secret America's getting fatter — diet fads, increasing gym memberships and public campaigns notwithstanding. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, more than 21 percent of Massachusetts residents are obese — up from less than 10 percent a decade ago. In 2005, more than 56 percent of Massachusetts residents were overweight.

But those fatty pounds are also translating into huge costs in terms of healthcare and quality of life. Those concerns brought town and city officials from across the commonwealth to Tufts University in Somerville Monday for the sort of inter-community summit that might have been difficult to imagine a few decades ago: making towns healthier.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno cut to the heart of the economics of it: "Health care cost is a budget buster," he told city, town and state leaders Monday.

But using the city of Somerville's efforts as a case example, panelists at Monday's forum argued cities and towns can begin making systematic changes in their communities to turn the tide, reduce the increasing obesity rate and create a higher quality of life for residents -- and ultimately, reducing costs. That means not only healthier school lunches and prioritizing school exercise programs, but changing the way streets and parks are designed – encouraging towns to be more pedestrian and bike friendly.

What's the immediate cost benefit?

"Well, it's like telling a 16-year-old that smoking is bad for them," said Kathy Pinkham, director of health and physical education for Needham schools and a participant at Monday's summit. "The immediate effects are difficult to see."

Champion walker, author and host of PBS's "America's Walking" Mark Fenton, the keynote speaker Monday, honed in on what became the catch phrase of the summit: free range kids. If you're earliest memories of physical activity involves riding your bike or playing in the woods or neighborhood in an unstructured environment, you probably know what Fenton is talking about.

"People over 30 tend to associate [physical activity] memories with free range outdoor interaction," Fenton said. "Those under 30 tend to associate physical activity with organized sports – organized by adults and driven there in a car. We used to be free range kids. We aren't anymore and we know that's bad for us. I think that's the problem we're really talking about."

Fenton argued for an across-the-board approach to healthy living in communities, which included private sector elements such as working with developers to design stores and businesses that are more accessible by foot and bike, examining every road project with an eye for potential accommodations for bicycles and pedestrians – essentially changes that get residents out of their cars and into their communities. The philosophy, he said, is the opposite of what many communities have been doing for decades –situating businesses and schools on the edge of towns and set back from roads behind large parking lots. In short, we've made our towns less user friendly and more auto friendly. Changing that, he said, means being proactive and opportunistic.

"You always consider bike lanes, pedestrians, public transit for every road – doesn't mean you have to do it, but you automatically address it," Fenton said. "It's about policy change. It's about really changing the rules."

Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone told the summit-goers Somerville has been working adamantly on changing those rules. Since 2004, he said, the city has created 20 new parks, playgrounds and community gardens. The city did it, he said, by aggressively pursuing grants. Somerville has also gained nationwide recognition in curbing childhood obesity in its schools.

Changes don't come easy, he said. "I'm still fixing problems today made from decisions or lack of decisions 50 years ago."

On roadways, the past emphasis was on getting traffic through, not slowing it down, he said. "Somerville has been a great example on how not to do it for many decades and we've begun to turn that around."

Despite all the emphasis on healthy living made in recent decades, physical inactivity continues to kill 365,000 people a year in the U.S., Fenton said. The kind of across-the-board changes the summit addressed, he said, are key to making the kind of sustainable life changes that will give residents healthier lives.

And the economics of all that? Dr. Christina Eonomos of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University said Massachusetts alone spent more than $22 million on obesity-related issues in 2007.

"A decrease in just 5 percent of obesity will save the commonwealth $10 billion over the next 10 years," she said.

Somerville Journal

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